The present invention relates to a container supply system, and more particularly to a container supply system for supplying containers such as bottles directly from a box to carriers in a container processing machine by reversing the box while the containers are being encased in the box, rather than taking the containers out of the box and individually delivering the containers.
Bottles for beverages such as beer bottles are usually recovered for reuse. Bottles are recovered from the market as being stored in boxes of synthetic resin. New bottles are also stored in boxes and delivered from bottle manufacturing factories. Both recovered and new bottles are washed by bottle washing machines, and then filled with desired beverages.
For supplying bottles to, for example, a bottle washing machine, it has been customary to take bottles out of a box with an uncaser, place the individual bottles on a feed conveyor and feed them erected to a supply unit in the bottle washing machine, move the bottles slidingly on an arcuate guide to turn them from the erected condition to a substantially horizontal posture, and then successively feed the bottles synchronously to a plurality of carriers that are interconnected by a chain or the like in the bottle washing machine.
One conventional process of supplying recovered bottles from a container supply system to a bottle washing machine will be described below with reference to FIGS. 20 and 21 of the accompany drawings
Recovered bottles are stored in a box, which is delivered to an uncaser 152 by means of a case conveyor 151 as shown in FIG. 20. The bottles are taken out of the box by the uncaser 152, and individually put erected on a bottle conveyor 153 which feeds the bottles to a container supply apparatus 155.
As shown in FIG. 21, the container supply apparatus 155 comprises a bottle conveyor 156 for delivering the bottles, an arcuate guide 157, and a rotary arm 158. The bottles fed in arrays by the bottle conveyor 156 are turned down into a substantially horizontal position by the rotary arm 158 and the arcuate guide 157, and then supplied into a bottle washing machine 60.
The bottle washing machine 60 has a movable endless chain 61 holding a number of bottle carriers 62. The bottles supplied horizontally into the bottle washing machine 60 are successively put synchronously into the respective bottle carriers 62.
In the conventional bottle supply system, bottles are taken out of a box by the uncaser 152 and individually placed on and fed by the bottle conveyor 153. Since the bottles are relatively tall as compared with their bottom area, the center of gravity of the bottles is in a high position. As the erected bottles cannot be moved stably in mutually spaced conditions, they are held together in contact while being fed on the bottle conveyor 153 so that the bottles will not fall down. However, the bottles are still conveyed unstably on the bottle conveyor 153. If the bottle conveyor 153 is operated in a pulsating manner or foreign matter is jammed in the bottle conveyor 153, some of the bottles may fall over and not be conveyed any longer. When this happens, the bottle conveyor 153 itself and other machines coupled thereto must be shut off, resulting in a reduced production rate.
The uncaser 152 for removing bottles from a box and the bottle conveyor 153 for individually delivering the bottles to the bottle supply apparatus 155 require a large expenditure of installation and energy costs, and also take up a Wide installation floor space.